- [Neil] Hey everyone, it's Neil Patel. And today I'm going to teach you about the WHIPS concept when it comes to content marketing. If you follow this concept, even if you're not the best writer, you'll be able to attract the right type of audience and then convert them into a customer.
With content marketing, you don't need to be the best writer, you just need to understand your reader. If you think about the Neil Patel blog, read any of my blog posts, I bet you'll see some grammar and spelling errors. Yes, I have editors and I try to avoid them, but still there's errors every once in a while.
It's because I'm not the best writer, but I understand my reader really well. If you don't understand your reader, just remind yourself of your musketeer. If you haven't filled out the musketeer worksheet, go to the previous lessons and then fill it out.
You can find it at neilpatel. com/training. This will allow you to truly understand your customer so that way you can target them and generate sales as well.
When you're writing, I don't want you to just continue to stare at a blank page and take forever to create content. It shouldn't. And if you follow the WHIPS concept, you won't have to worry about that one bit.
WHIPS is all about page awareness and there's five main sections of the WHIPS framework from window shoppers, help me, inform me, persuade me, and show me. And I'm going to break them down one step at a time. So window shopper, they're usually interested in purchasing something, but they might not be from you.
So someone's like, yeah, I'm looking to buy this purse. I'm looking to buy this bag or wallet or whatever it may be, but they don't know exactly if it's going to be from you or another store. Then there's a help me.
They're aware of their issue, but they don't know how to overcome it. They're always Googling, searching for a solution, and if you're using the keyword Ideas Report, Ubersuggest, it'll help you find a lot of help me key words. Then of course inform me, they're aware of the solution, but they don't know where to get it.
So when someone's Googling for the solution, you want to make sure they find your site. And again, you can get these keywords the inform me type of ones from the keyword Ideas Report within Ubersuggest. Persuade me, these people know about a product or service and the competitors, and that's a really important part.
They not just know about the product or service, but they know about the competitors as well. Here are typical comparison keywords, EX, MailChimp versus ConvertKit. They're both email marketing solutions, but which one should I buy?
And again, if you're looking for a comparison related keywords that are more so related to persuade me, you can find them in the comparison tab on Ubersuggest. And of course the show me, they knows about the specific product or service. They just need the final push.
You just need to tell them, Hey, if you use this product or service, it'll do this for you, and here's how amazing it is. And here's all the testimonials. Now that you know who targeting you want to make sure you don't get stuck in the problem loop.
See if you're a perfectionist, you're going to be like, "Oh my God, this piece isn't perfect. "I can't push it out there," don't worry about that. I push out content all the time that's not perfect.
You also don't want to be one that just continually has all these ideas on what you want to blog on, but you never take action and you don't release anything or you don't want to be that changeling who create something and then constantly changes because if you keep changing your content, keep changing your ideas before you publish or write anything, you're never going to win and succeed. Instead of continually be stuck in that problem loop, I want you to take a page out of Dave Brailsford's book. Dave Brailsford is a British cycling coach.
His team has won the Tour de France six times and he believes in marginal gains, and I do too, and that's the same that goes with your content or your SEO. It's not one shot, it's not one thing that gets you to the finish line and beat your competition. It's a lot of little things that add up and when you do all these little things right, that's how you win.
Just look at Toyota, they built a $272 billion revenue a year business. They did it how? By continually getting better year over year over the last 80 plus years.
That's the key to success. It's little small improvements over time. You're in control of your own success.
As long as you try to do little things and continually get better, you can win big over time. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen over time. And to help jumpstart you, I want you to have my 2020 rulebook.
You can download this at neilpatel. com/training. It's underneath the video in SEO Unlocked and this rulebook breaks down 20 things that'll help you become better content marketers.
The first one is put people first. If you help people and always put them first, you're much more likely to succeed. Number two, you want to create content that teaches if your content doesn't teach and educate people and really provide a benefit where they're done reading and they're like, "Oh, I learned this," you're not going to do well.
Number three, create a conversation. By creating a conversation, by using the words you and I within your blog post, it's going to feel like they're right there in front of you having a conversation with you and they're much more likely to stick around. Four, define your own tone.
Use your own voice, do what's natural for you. Don't try to copy someone else's voice. You also want to write to one person.
Remember, yes, thousands of people could be reading your content, but it's one person at a time, so make sure that you're writing to that one person. That way it's much more personable. You can also use Google voice instead of typing, so in Google docs you can use the voice feature.
A lot of times I'll just talk and it'll write things down and then I'll go back and then modify it. Number seven, use active voice over passive voice. Active voices like you stole the cookie from the cookie jar.
Passive voices like the cookie was stolen from the cookie jar. Active voice is much more appealing. I also want you to keep your sentences short.
Two to three sentences max per paragraph. Typically a paragraph will be around five or six lines max, hence two to three sentences. I also want you to use simple words.
It doesn't matter if you went to an Ivy League School or graduated from Harvard, your reader probably doesn't have an Ivy League education. I hate when people use complex words or technical jargon. It's really a big pet peeve for me.
You also want to backup your findings with research. If you're using data trying to prove a point, you need a back it all up with research. If you don't, you're not going to be seen as an expert, and this can be done through images, infographics, stats, studies, whatever it may be that shows that you're just not making up your data and if you don't know how to find research within your space, Google a keyword and add the word data or stats at the end, so like SEO stats, SEO data.
That's example. 11, read inspirational writers. I read people like Seth Godin or Guy Kawasaki, love their writing style.
Go find ones that really resonate with you, read it because it'll help you become a better writer. You also want to add visual media. I use a ton of images as well as videos and even sometimes audio file and it helps convey my message.
Image says a thousand words. 13, you want to guide your user to their next step. Let them know what they need to do step by step and make sure you interlink to other related content pieces that can help them with their journey.
And of course with your blog posts, I love wrapping things up with a conclusion. So at the end of my blog post I always put a conclusion because what I learned over time through heatmaps studies using Crazy Egg, a lot of people will go to your blog post, scroll all the way down, read the conclusion, if they like it, they'll scroll back up and then read the rest. 15, start with the personal story.
Storytelling is a 1,000-plus-year-old marketing tactic. It works really well. I love leading with personal stories and if you look at all the whole film industry in Hollywood, they love using stories.
Is because it's addicting and people really get hooked in. 16, edits can wait, your piece doesn't have to be perfect. Heck, sometimes I publish things and then we go back and edit them later because we found that there was a lot of issues or usually not actually a lot, but usually small issues and we cleaned them up and that's okay.
17, end with the question and when they leave a comment, I make sure I respond to each and every single one. 18, promise yourself to start. If you don't have a routine and you're not writing content consistently, you're not going to crank out enough to get traffic and for SEO to work out for you.
19, create a solid outline. It doesn't take more than 45 minutes to create a blog post in general once you get really good at it, but if you're just starting out, of course it usually will take you longer. But my formula is a hook, then the opening, then a body, and then a close, close is the conclusion.
And 20, let the content rest for a day. I let my content sit for a day before I publish it, and the reason being is when it sits for a day, what ends up happening is I'll think of ways to make it better and then I'll go in and edit it before I publish. Now last but not least, I want you to head over to neilpatel.
com/training, go to the SEO Unlocked, go to this video lesson if you're not already there. And below this video you'll find the WHIPS awareness cheatsheet, download the rulebook, and of course download the list post template below and create your first draft post. I look forward to helping you grow your traffic through content marketing.
